Animals? Do they come back?

[Japzzi]

Im living in a desert (Genius place to start right?) and I just want to know if animals reproduce/respawn? If not then im sort of screwed.. Well there is always human meat but that breaks down my people way to fast.

[Wex]

If you have to be in the desert, you better plan on living on veggies.
That is, if you have room to grow them, or hydroponics.
They come back, but they aren't reliable. Also, when all dromedary go on rampage, the best I got was 2.
Human meat is the vanilla alternative.
Synthmeat the modded one.

[Goo Poni]

Animals do respawn, but it's not noted with any sort of message. Small herds will just appear at the edge of the map and begin to do their thing if there are too few animals on the map. Unless you are driving a massive colony, you shouldn't need to hunt the map to extinction and if you're only hunting a few dromedaries at once, you'll probably never see yourself run out of wildlife.

[christhekiller]

On my desert map most of the animals ended up starving to death. Which I found to be weird, but ya know, whatevs. But yeah they do respawn. Had a dromedary herd spawn in not too long after they all promptly starved themselves off the map.

You should be able to find a large enough patch of fertile soil that should keep you sustained on veggies, at least until you research Hydroponics and/ or fertilizer pumps. I personally favored the pumps as it required less long-term power but Hydroponics will end up growing more food faster. So to each his own.

[Goo Poni]

I play in TTM, both of those ideas are about as long term and expensive as each other. Each hydroponics bench must cost something like 1.5k to 2k silver to purchase the necessary parts to build. I could build the parts themselves, but that requires another 2-3k investment in something else and I think it also requires a steady supply of mechanoids to tear apart.

I have definitely noticed that camels are starving all over the show due to a sheer lack of growing foliage. Their AI doesn't make them search the entire map for food (my patchy growing zones), so they die out on the other side of the map. Free meat.

[Japzzi]

Okay thanks! c: It seems like the raw meat dosent spoil either but my people eat it very fast. Im running a sort of village build with not to many people living in my colony to decrease the raider spawns. Still looking for ways to better defend my home though.